City coalition plans to aid village in Kenya

Leaders of a local volunteer group gathered Monday at the University of Chicago's Rockefeller Chapel to promote public awareness about poverty in Africa and raise $1.5 million for a village in Kenya.

"Over the next four years, we want to create some real relationships between the leadership of Nyandiwa (the village) and the people in our Chicago community," said Tracy Poe, co-chair of Chicago Promise, which spearheads the effort.

One speaker was Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at the Earth Institute at Columbia University and co-founder of the non-profit Millennium Promise, which is working in more than 70 villages in sub-Saharan Africa to improve living conditions. Nyandiwa is one of the villages selected by the Millennium Promise, based in New York City.

The local effort is unusual for Millennium Promise because it involves a coalition of religious, business and civic groups, he said. "This effort is the first of its kind," Sachs said.

Poe said the local group, which had its first meeting last year, will approach the public school system to try to create a dialogue between children in Chicago and Kenya.

"We have the opportunity to be able to teach our kids about what it's like to live on the other side of the world," Poe said.

The organization also will solicit funds from private donors and help establish Internet communication in the village, located in western Kenya.

"The people in this part of Kenya by and large do not have a lot of education," Poe said. "Their voices are not heard that much. This will help them connect to the rest of the world."